14 December 2011

After a morning of intense weight-training, I picked her up to attend a local museum to view a Victorian art show and Steampunk exhibition. It was her idea. The Victorian art was sublime, as always, and included a prized Burne-Jones piece and several hunting scenes. The Steampunk show was another matter. Steampunk, as Wikipedia defines it:

'...is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United States—that incorporates elements of either science fiction or fantasy. Works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology or futuristic innovations as Victorians may have envisioned them, based on a Victorian perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, art, etc. This technology includes such fictional machines as those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne...'

So there you have it. Most of the artifacts and clothing involve configurations of leather, metal, and imagined sci-fi contraptions. Steampunk, while on the surface rather silly, is precisely the sort of sub-culture or alternative community our people must construct as a balwark against the State-sponsored popular culture. My particular favourite was the Jules Verne exhibit, featuring the novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and a model of the submarine Nautilus, with which I was fascinated as a small child. Captain Nemo was an early inspiration.